[Urbane Guerrilla]

It occurs to me to wonder -- after discovering that Lucky Jack Aubrey (he's like Horatio Hornblower but more recently written, and more lively written too) weighs exactly what I do -- does anyone know why exactly fourteen pounds to the stone, and not a dozen, nor eighteen?

[tangentially OT]In reading any Aubrey-Maturin Patrick O'Brian novel, it is helpful to have recourse to The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea. I suspect O'Brian had his own copy. I've finally learned what brailing is, sailing large, and sailing on a broad reach; tacking and wearing I'd already grasped. O'Brian's novels give you the no doubt dangerous impression that with a couple of week's experience on a square-rigged ship, provided you'd read all the novels, you could con and fight her -- if not a line-of-battle ship, then at least a fourth-rater (also explained in the Companion).